See if you can figure out what this means? I want to take you to two or three places online that in the aggregate baffle me.

First, this news article dated today opens with this line: A PR firm has created a new kind of news release that has many features designed specifically for the internet. It goes on to clarify by saying, The "social media press release",... features hyperlinked text, audio and video content relating to the company, and the option to social bookmark with Digg, del.icio.us and Reddit.

What interests me is that no where in this news item is there any link to the featured news release or anything else for that matter. By that, I'm just saying that while PR firms rush to add social media features, at least some media types either don't get it, won't get it, or could care less. But wait... this news site is from an organization called directtrafficmedia.co.uk which uses this tag line: "Online marketing and link building specialists." [boldface added by me for emphasis].

Thinking it would be informative nevertheless to learn more about this new press release optimized for the Internet age, I went here to webitpr, which is identified in the news item as the firm to have innovated this new approach. But when I went to their recent news, I couldn't find the release referenced in the news item... maybe they haven't posted it yet? So then I figured I'd just look at the most recent one on the list. Here it is.

It has five links: three back to the webitpr home page from which I just came (although if you got this release in an email a link like that would be useful, but probably one would suffice?). The other two links are to webitpr's services. Call me crazy, but that doesn't do much for me. You? (I figured maybe the PR firm would have a blog, being into social media and such, but couldn't find one of them either.)

Now I'm no expert on social media news releases... I actually think the phrase is oxymoronic (not a word, but you know what I mean). But don't you think a link to a podcast (preferably independent), links to additional third party source material, etc. would make this release a bit more sociable? A video taped user case study?

It makes my head "spin."